Author Quotes

If the universe is running down like a clock, the clock must have been wound up at a date which we could name if we knew it. The world, if it is to have an end in time, must have had a beginning in time.

Faith always contains an element of risk, of venture; and we are impelled to make the venture by the affinity and attraction which we feel in ourselves.

Don't get up from the feast of life without paying for your share of it.

Bereavement is the sharpest challenge to our trust in God; if faith can overcome this, there is no mountain which it cannot remove.

Bereavement is the deepest initiation into the mysteries of human life, an initiation more searching and profound than even happy love.

All faith consists essentially in the recognition of a world of spiritual values behind, yet not apart from, the world of natural phenomena.

A cat can be trusted to purr when she is pleased, which is more than can be said for human beings.

It takes in reality only one to make a quarrel. It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.

I have no fear that the candle lighted in Palestine years ago will ever be put out.

Gambling is a disease of barbarians superficially civilized.

Faith is an act of rational choice, which determines us to act as if certain things were true, and in the confident expectation that they will prove to be true.

Democracy is only an experiment in government, and it has the obvious disadvantage of merely counting votes instead of weighing them.

A good government remains the greatest of human blessings and no nation has ever enjoyed it.

What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.

The wisdom of the wise is an uncommon degree of common sense.

Action is the normal completion of the act of will which begins as prayer. That action is not always external, but it is always some kind of effective energy.

If you realize too acutely how valuable time is, you are too paralyzed to do anything.

If you let your fear of consequence prevent you from following your deepest instinct, your life will be safe, expedient and thin.

I would sort out all the arguments and see which belonged to fear and which to creativeness. Other things being equal, I would make the decision which had the larger number of creative reasons on its side.

A person needs at intervals to separate himself from family and companions and go to new places. He must go without his familiars in order to be open to influences, to change.

There is nothing better than the encouragement of a good friend.

We begin to die as soon as we are born, and the end is linked to the beginning.

Man has the possibility of existence after death. But possibility is one thing and the realization of the possibility is quite a different thing.

A bird in hand is a certainty. But a bird in the bush may sing.

The only sure thing about luck is that it will change.

Never a tear bedims the eye that time and patience will not dry.

Never a lip is curved with pain that can't be kissed into smiles again.

The principles we live by, in business and in social life, are the most important part of happiness.

Most comic scriptwriters are very bad. The artists are good, but the writers are so bad.

I like Ireland because it means I'm near France.